Tracklist:
1. Six Hours One Week [6:40]
2. Time Went Slow [9:45]
3. Far In Out [5:54]
4. Stairway [8:10]
5. Forever Turning [5:18]
6. Black Box [7:41]
7. Hush [9:05]
8. Trondheim - Gavle [9:10]

Created and Mixed by Mick Harris at The Box, Birmingham, England
Art: Ruth Collins
Mastered by Noel Summerville
Produced by Mick Harris

Personnel:
Michael John Harris and Nicholas James Bullen: bass, lead guitar, drums, drum machine, samples, percussion, voice

QUOTE

Mick Harris' first Scorn release after the departure of bassist Nick Bullen is a refinement of previous concerns, with spare, repetitive rhythms and drum loops providing a tether for dark, brooding atmospherics and harsh, effects-heavy samples. Less immediately engaging, perhaps, than previous albums, Gyral works best as beat-oriented dark ambient, its strongest impact working on an almost subconscious or subliminal level. (by Sean Cooper, AMG) This album marked a massive shift in direction for scorn, as it was the first album mick harris produced solo under the scorn name. it also marked a musical change (again) from the more commercial (and definitely more successful) Evanescence album. Far from the ambient dub/breakbeat of that LP, Gyral marked scorns first foray into isolationist soundscapes, and "circular" musical patterns (hence the name Gyral). If there is one scorn album i recommend the non-believers listen to first, it is this one for the simple fact that it is a link between scorns past, and his future. And simply for the fact that this album rocks. (LifeSpan-Void, Discogs) Nietzsche said that after God had been declared dead, after conventional morality had been effectively laid to waste, new values would arise. Scorn could easily been seen as the ideal music for such activity; it’s what metalheads might start to listen to between the days they shave off their stringy hair or crusty dreadlocks and downy hair starts to take root again on their sun-deprived scalps. I should know: I think this (along with Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album and, of course, Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2) was one of the first records I got after I did so myself. Which is not to be disingenuous, not to say I was a teenage metalhead: I wasn’t by any means, but I still can’t help but identify this with the music metal fans get into after they’ve shed a layer of selves, discarding layer after layer of morbid imagery and kick-in-the-balls drumming until what’s left is an embryonic, post-musical elision, the great hush at the center of it all. Think of room tone, think of the two-second silence that sets in between ultra-terse, ultra-pulverizing blasts of grindcore terror: is that what Mick Harris of Napalm Death started to think may have been his greatest source of power? Between the time he quit playing drums for the band and started Scorn, a sometimes-duo, sometimes-solo project best described as beats and bass, it’s tempting to think so. Which is not to say that Scorn began in terrifying minimalism, because they did not. "Lick Forever Dog," the Evanescence and Ellipsis albums (the former a haunting series of mood pieces with occasional vocals and heavily treated guitar, even going so far as to include subdued house beats and tribal percussion, the latter a remix disc that enlisted the likes of Coil, Meat Beat Manifesto, and a not-yet-famous Autechre), and finally Gyral mark a series of steps in a quest for the Bambaataa-esque perfect beat, only it is, in this case, more a low thrum than anything else. This album’s follow-up, the baffling Logghi Barogghi, went beyond zone-out ambiance (of the sort Harris was by the time creating as Lull) into oblique, fractured hostility, a whisper as opposed to a scream. Gyral might be seen as a transitional piece in the Scorn discography, but it’s all the better for it. It seems immediately recognizable as the first work produced after Harris’ break with fellow Napalm Death cohort Nicholas Bullen; this album initially sounds very well like his contributions were erased from the final product, perhaps even without much (or any) remixing or restructuring. The album’s eight tracks don’t vary much, but contain their share of density and detail, even if much of it is so subtle as to approach the listener in a subconscious level. "Six Hours One Week" brings in a languid hip-hop loop along with powerfully low bass and ethereal to create a downright peaceful, entrancing mood that lasts for some five minutes. The appropriately titled "Time Went Slow" is more sinister, already beginning to pry apart the sonic layers that comprise dub, yet somehow do not make it what it is; it’s in the reductions and subtractions, which Harris manages to carry out on the rest of the album superbly. "Stairway" contains slivers of backwards-masked piano meshed with more powerful bass, turning the descending-then-ascending song into a tricked-out sonic illusion that seems to have been taken a page or two from the Wu-Tang notebook. Other songs contain ghostly afterimages of sound in samples from mysterious sources; for once, these elements truly seem the equivalent of Raudive voices and not mannered bits of garnish, as in the hands of less capable producers. After this song, the album descends further into blackouts of sensory deprivation, with (again, another series of apt titles) "Black Box," "Hush," and the fantastically sinister "Trondheim-Gävle" turning this carefully cultivated sense of solitude into something that keeps getting grimmer and grimmer. The latter track is what really shines here, in which a steadily escalating drumbeat keeps hammering away at the nervous tension that has built throughout the album, then finally condenses it into an explosive boil. Ultimately, there is not much that can be said about this album; seven years after I’ve heard it and tried to explain it to more-often-disinterested-than-not friends, it continually resists efforts to put its remarkable sort of magic into words. Of course, there’s the chance that this darker-than-dark dub might seem boring to the average listener, but I tend to think of this album as the encapsulation of John Cage’s famous dictum that nothing is boring, that if you dread doing something for five minutes, try it for ten. Only, in this case, the dull activity in question might seem more like falling down a chasm into darkness: endlessness makes it simultaneously thrilling and intolerable. To the wrong people, that is. (Chris Smith, stylusmagazine.com) This CD is very minimal, but it's also very well done. The beat in the first track sets a nice groove that you can really get into. It's a great lead in to the rest of the album. There is also some very very deep bass in here... if you're trying out subwoofers Gyral is the perfect CD to bring along. The songs are very rhythmic and it sets a great mood overall. Very cool. Forever Turning is kind of screwed up, but you might like it depending on how much you like the strange effects on the drums. Personally, that's my least favorite track, but there are some really great ones on here like Stairway. There is also one track where the beat is sculpted out of some metallic clunking sounds; that one absolutely rules. Overall, this CD is excellent. Forever Turning is not really that bad, and the rest of the tracks are great. Gyral is some good stuff. (Matt Feusner, mickharris.net)

SPOILER!

CODE Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 3 from 28. July 2007 EAC extraction logfile from 25. August 2009, 20:56 Scorn / Gyral Used drive  : PLEXTOR DVDR  PX-810SA  Adapter: 1  ID: 0 Read mode              : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache      : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction                      : 48 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks  : No Null samples used in CRC calculations      : Yes Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface Used output format : Internal WAV Routines Sample format      : 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo TOC of the extracted CD     Track |  Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector     ---------------------------------------------------------         1  |  0:00.00 |  6:40.02 |        0    |    30001          2  |  6:40.02 |  9:45.13 |    30002    |    73889          3  | 16:25.15 |  5:54.32 |    73890    |  100471          4  | 22:19.47 |  8:10.70 |    100472    |  137291          5  | 30:30.42 |  5:18.38 |    137292    |  161179          6  | 35:49.05 |  7:41.15 |    161180    |  195769          7  | 43:30.20 |  9:05.60 |    195770    |  236704          8  | 52:36.05 |  9:10.42 |    236705    |  277996  Range status and errors Selected range     Filename E:\INCOMING\EAC\Scorn - Gyral.wav     Peak level 97.3 %     Range quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 13527BE4     Copy CRC 13527BE4     Copy OK No errors occurred End of status report

Extractor: Exact Audio Copy v0.99pb3
Codec: Monkey's Audio 3.97
Compression: High Lossless
Total Time: 61:46
Ripper: SurowyTato